Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My comments today are in regard to the recent Norman Wells block land transfer lease decision. This action is wrong every way you look at it. Negotiations leading up to the 144 square kilometre lease or sale were confidential, not just ignoring but excluding the interests of the Town of Norman Wells. The department allowed the corporation 10 months to get their application right and the municipality 72 hours to respond, without even providing the necessary documentation on which to base their response. Our municipal partners were treated with contempt. Even the terms and conditions of the lease are confidential. The Town has been told that they are protected under the Access to Information and Privacy Act; more contempt.
This lease was granted even though there was no development proposal justifying the need for this huge total parcel. At a minimum, this makes a joke of the progressive improvements to our own Commissioner’s Land Act. How do you require security deposits if you don’t even know what the land use is going to be? We’ve debased our own law.
Lacking a clear development proposal, we can only presume the corporation is going to sit on the land. This is called speculation, which is specifically discouraged under our own land pricing policies, so we have violated our own policies.
This all makes a pretty embarrassing checklist. The failure to accommodate our own law, the secretive process, the exclusion of municipal interests, the preferential treatment and receipt of a deficient application, the buffet-style selection of lease versus sale. This is one of the most questionable government actions I have come across. The final outcome, putting this municipality at the mercy of the corporation with rights to all lands surrounding it, strangles and robs this community of its future.
The Minister recognizes the possibility of errors and is going to review how future major sales and lease agreements are handled. I’m not convinced he realizes the serious and flagrant failure to act in the best interests of our communities for this case. For the sake of our relations with all municipal government partners, I hope his review is done quickly and transparently and includes a look at the ethics of the actions taken. I’m calling on the Minister to do this in full consultation with committee and with the NWT Association of Communities. I’ll be asking questions.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.
